Contenders face off at Candidates Night
The candidates for mayor of Wooster, judge of the Wayne County Municipal Court and member of the Wooster City School District board of education faced off when the League of Women Voters of Wayne County and the Wooster Branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) sponsored Candidates Night at the Wayne County Public Library Oct. 27.
Taking the stage to field written questions submitted by the public and posed to the six candidates by moderator Cindy Biggs were judicial candidates Carol White Millhoan and David Todaro, school board candidates Todd Spiker and Michael Steiner and mayoral candidates Bob Breneman and Greg Gehris.
Also attending Candidates Night were unopposed candidates for seats on Wooster City Council Mike Buytendyk, Mark Cavin, Craig Sanders and David Silvestri and unopposed candidates for seats on the Wooster City School District board of education William Gantz and Robert Reynolds.
The annual Candidates Night forum was sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Wayne County and the Wooster Branch of the American Association of University Women.
The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan political organization whose mission it is to encourage the informed and active participation of citizens in government, to work to increase understanding of major public policy issues and to influence public policy through education and advocacy.
For more information on the League of Women Voters of Wayne County, log on http://www.lwvwaynecounty.org.
The mission of the AAUW is to advance equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research.
More information on the American Association of University Women can be found at http://www.aauw.org.
Here is a sampling of some of the questions posed to the candidates and excerpts of the responses they gave during the 90 minute debate.
Wayne County Municipal Court Judge
What would you like to see accomplished to improve the efficiency of the municipal court system?
Carol White Millhoan (Nonpartisan):
The municipal court is extremely efficient at this particular point. There always are ways in which efficiencies can be improved. We’ve done a great deal of that in the last few years.
In 2008, when the financial crisis swept the country and swept the county, of course our courts were affected as well. We were asked to reduce our budgets. We did that. We were impacted by the closing of the Discipline and Rehabilitation Center. We had 45 jail beds that were typically used by our misdemeanor offenders. Those were no longer available. We have accommodated that shortage of space.
We’ve decreased our budget. We’ve increased our services. We are a very efficient court at this point. Our challenge will be to simply continue those efficiencies.
We have made great success in reducing the number of repeat offenders. We’ve had programs that we developed specifically with that in mind. From when I became municipal court judge in 2006 through 2010 we had a 15 percent reduction in the number of misdemeanor criminal cases filed. If we have fewer cases we need to deal with we’ll have fewer people we need to have in jail, we’ll have a smaller system and that would certainly help increase efficiencies.
David Todaro (R):
I would replace the pay or appear system of paying delinquent fines.
Right now we have a pay or appear system. Either go in and pay or you appear in court in front of a magistrate while court is on (and) all court personnel are there and you explain “hey I can’t pay the bill” and you walk out the door. Then you get on a regiment – a calendar – and you continue to do that.
Sooner or later they don’t show up and when they don’t show up the judges file a bench warrant, deputies go out, track them down, pick them up and bring them in, sometimes jail them for a day, back into court in front of the magistrate, they can’t pay, right out the door. It’s a silly system.
I recommend something that other municipal courts have done around Wayne County and what our common pleas court has done and that is create a system and hand it over to a collection agency.
I don’t want to see our deputies - our law enforcement people - be collection agents. I want them to protect and serve. I think it’s a waste to use county resources like that when we have collection agencies that can track delinquent payers.
Wooster City School Board
Explain how you think the passage of Issue 2 will help/hurt the schools.
Todd Spiker (No party affiliation listed):
There are some good things out of it and a lot of bad also.
Tenure…should not dictate teachers’ jobs. They should be just like anybody else in the private sector. If your performance is low - if your performance is not up to standards - then you are let go or you are reprimanded in some fashion.
I think that they have to come around to be with the private sector workforce. Just because they are in the public spotlight they can’t, let’s just say, do whatever they want just because they’ve got tenure.
Michael Steiner (R):
I think I feel like many of us that SB 5 as a piece of legislation perhaps went too far and there are aspects of that I don’t necessarily agree with. But there are aspects of SB 5 that I do agree with.
I do not think that seniority should dictate every human resource move that a school district makes. I’m not a big proponent of tenure.
Financially we’ve done some rough estimates. It would look to us like a savings of upwards of $1 million a year to Wooster City Schools if SB 5 remains. As someone who is responsible for the fiscal well-being of the Wooster City Schools I have to consider that very seriously.
Mayor of Wooster
How do you propose to bring more “livable wage” jobs into the city?
Bob Breneman (R):
We work on economic development every single day at the city. We’ve got some wonderful things happening.
We have a state of the art research facility on our southern border in The Ohio State University Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. They just finished construction of a $22 million facility called the PAAR facility, which is one of only three facilities in the United States that can do this kind of research and it’s right here in Wooster, Ohio.
Those are the kinds of things we need to be doing - moving those forward – which will attract some of the world’s top researchers into the area and bring jobs along with them.
I know that LUK is looking for people right now to employ. We have many opportunities.
Greg Gehris (Nonpartisan):
If we made this town more green and we actually set an example of using some of this new technology we might actually promote job growth in the state and maybe in the local area.
I know it’s all still going to China…We’re not doing enough legislatively to stop business and jobs (from) going to China.
This is something that the town needs to look at more realistically. We’re not going to find good paying jobs. They are going to be very scarce. It’s going to be very difficult.
I think it’s important that we have new blood in this town that can think outside of the box and can look at things outside the box with new ideas. I think that’s part of the problem. We’re not having new ideas.
Taking the stage to field written questions submitted by the public and posed to the six candidates by moderator Cindy Biggs were judicial candidates Carol White Millhoan and David Todaro, school board candidates Todd Spiker and Michael Steiner and mayoral candidates Bob Breneman and Greg Gehris.
Also attending Candidates Night were unopposed candidates for seats on Wooster City Council Mike Buytendyk, Mark Cavin, Craig Sanders and David Silvestri and unopposed candidates for seats on the Wooster City School District board of education William Gantz and Robert Reynolds.
The annual Candidates Night forum was sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Wayne County and the Wooster Branch of the American Association of University Women.
The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan political organization whose mission it is to encourage the informed and active participation of citizens in government, to work to increase understanding of major public policy issues and to influence public policy through education and advocacy.
For more information on the League of Women Voters of Wayne County, log on http://www.lwvwaynecounty.org.
The mission of the AAUW is to advance equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and research.
More information on the American Association of University Women can be found at http://www.aauw.org.
Here is a sampling of some of the questions posed to the candidates and excerpts of the responses they gave during the 90 minute debate.
Wayne County Municipal Court Judge
What would you like to see accomplished to improve the efficiency of the municipal court system?
Carol White Millhoan (Nonpartisan):
The municipal court is extremely efficient at this particular point. There always are ways in which efficiencies can be improved. We’ve done a great deal of that in the last few years.
In 2008, when the financial crisis swept the country and swept the county, of course our courts were affected as well. We were asked to reduce our budgets. We did that. We were impacted by the closing of the Discipline and Rehabilitation Center. We had 45 jail beds that were typically used by our misdemeanor offenders. Those were no longer available. We have accommodated that shortage of space.
We’ve decreased our budget. We’ve increased our services. We are a very efficient court at this point. Our challenge will be to simply continue those efficiencies.
We have made great success in reducing the number of repeat offenders. We’ve had programs that we developed specifically with that in mind. From when I became municipal court judge in 2006 through 2010 we had a 15 percent reduction in the number of misdemeanor criminal cases filed. If we have fewer cases we need to deal with we’ll have fewer people we need to have in jail, we’ll have a smaller system and that would certainly help increase efficiencies.
David Todaro (R):
I would replace the pay or appear system of paying delinquent fines.
Right now we have a pay or appear system. Either go in and pay or you appear in court in front of a magistrate while court is on (and) all court personnel are there and you explain “hey I can’t pay the bill” and you walk out the door. Then you get on a regiment – a calendar – and you continue to do that.
Sooner or later they don’t show up and when they don’t show up the judges file a bench warrant, deputies go out, track them down, pick them up and bring them in, sometimes jail them for a day, back into court in front of the magistrate, they can’t pay, right out the door. It’s a silly system.
I recommend something that other municipal courts have done around Wayne County and what our common pleas court has done and that is create a system and hand it over to a collection agency.
I don’t want to see our deputies - our law enforcement people - be collection agents. I want them to protect and serve. I think it’s a waste to use county resources like that when we have collection agencies that can track delinquent payers.
Wooster City School Board
Explain how you think the passage of Issue 2 will help/hurt the schools.
Todd Spiker (No party affiliation listed):
There are some good things out of it and a lot of bad also.
Tenure…should not dictate teachers’ jobs. They should be just like anybody else in the private sector. If your performance is low - if your performance is not up to standards - then you are let go or you are reprimanded in some fashion.
I think that they have to come around to be with the private sector workforce. Just because they are in the public spotlight they can’t, let’s just say, do whatever they want just because they’ve got tenure.
Michael Steiner (R):
I think I feel like many of us that SB 5 as a piece of legislation perhaps went too far and there are aspects of that I don’t necessarily agree with. But there are aspects of SB 5 that I do agree with.
I do not think that seniority should dictate every human resource move that a school district makes. I’m not a big proponent of tenure.
Financially we’ve done some rough estimates. It would look to us like a savings of upwards of $1 million a year to Wooster City Schools if SB 5 remains. As someone who is responsible for the fiscal well-being of the Wooster City Schools I have to consider that very seriously.
Mayor of Wooster
How do you propose to bring more “livable wage” jobs into the city?
Bob Breneman (R):
We work on economic development every single day at the city. We’ve got some wonderful things happening.
We have a state of the art research facility on our southern border in The Ohio State University Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. They just finished construction of a $22 million facility called the PAAR facility, which is one of only three facilities in the United States that can do this kind of research and it’s right here in Wooster, Ohio.
Those are the kinds of things we need to be doing - moving those forward – which will attract some of the world’s top researchers into the area and bring jobs along with them.
I know that LUK is looking for people right now to employ. We have many opportunities.
Greg Gehris (Nonpartisan):
If we made this town more green and we actually set an example of using some of this new technology we might actually promote job growth in the state and maybe in the local area.
I know it’s all still going to China…We’re not doing enough legislatively to stop business and jobs (from) going to China.
This is something that the town needs to look at more realistically. We’re not going to find good paying jobs. They are going to be very scarce. It’s going to be very difficult.
I think it’s important that we have new blood in this town that can think outside of the box and can look at things outside the box with new ideas. I think that’s part of the problem. We’re not having new ideas.
Published: November 1, 2011
